There is a lot of buzz around people presenting sessions at their local VMUG meetings. I think this is great and it should lead to some great discussions. I personally try to present at least once a year at a meeting and this year I will be doing my second presentation in a few weeks. Made a goal to push myself a bit more and try and be more helpful when possible.

A couple of weeks ago on February 6th I presented a session at the Detroit VMUG. This was being sponsored by Ahead my daytime employer. So I put together a session that focused on education. Specifically some of the things that I’ve seen when working with customers that can be disturbing from time to time. Historically there has been a resistance to change by many and in a time when our market is rapidly changing with many disruptions happening. I don’t think this is a time to keep the blinders on. So my session talked about what are some areas or skills that people should be looking at learning.

In a couple of weeks on March 19th in Chicago I will be co-presenting a session on vCloud Hybrid Service (vCHS) with a customer. This is pretty cool since its not often that we get customers to get up a speak. We will be talking about the vCHS service offering and then more specifically about how they are already putting the cloud offering to use in their environment. We look forward to seeing a bunch of great members at the meeting and this should drive a great conversation.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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We are fresh off the completion of the 2013 Chicago VMUG User Conference on October 22nd. This was our 3rd year for the conference and our biggest event yet. We moved to a large venue this year that offers a better location and layout. This made it easier for people attending to get to the site and find their way around the conference.

The conference was a huge success the VMUG team in Chicago is very happy with the turn out. We have just over 1000 people register for the event and 785 people showed up at the event. This was more than 100 more than 2012, we hope to carry the momentum into 2014.

The leadership team in Chicago would like to thank VMware, VMUG headquarters, vendors and attendees for making this years conference GREAT! To help summarize the day I wanted to put together some notes on the highlights. I also wanted to do something new this year other than just a regular blog post.

So I have created the first VMUG recap comic. I’ve captured some of the cool things from the conference and people that were in attendance. This is only a small sampling that I have pulled together from a few people but it should give you a good idea. You can view the pages of the comic embedded below or download the PDF version from HERE.

Hope you enjoy.

Page 1

The top image shows the keynote room that was setup to accommodate 750 people. It was a big room and was pretty full during keynotes and lunch. The lower left image is Jay from VCE talking about the Software Defined Data Center. He tossed in some Robots for examples. The last image is a picture form one of the VMware EUC focused sessions presented by Dave Stafford from VMware HQ.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

Page 2

The top left is the zombie that the Bluelock team brought along for their DRaaS offering. The top right is a sample of two of the vendors from the day enjoying a friendly discussion. See even rivals can get along most of the time. The lower left is the luck winner of an Apple MacBook Air compute from one of the prize giveaways. The last image is Chris Wahl carting in our mega giveaway of the day. An entire home lab worth $4000, we are very proud to have offered such an amazing giveaway.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

Page 3

The top left image is an attendee asking a question during the afternoon Question and Answer session. The top right photo is the lucky winner of the Home Lab giveaway. Not sure if that guy will stop smiling this year. The middle photo is from a session of automation using VMware Orchestrator and it was presented by a pair of Customers. The VMUG team is very proud anytime a customer is willing to present a session. The lower left is a picture from a Veeam session presented by Mr Rick Vanover. And the last image is a small view from the Vendor exhibit hall.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

Page 4

On the fourth page we start in the top right with Chris one of the VMUG leaders opening up the conference. He talked about some VMUG programs and a brief overview of recent VMware news. This years conference included a Podcasting Room that drew in 3 podcasters. They created multiple show recordings and live interviews during the day. The middle picture on the right show the testing room for people that took the VMware VCA tests at the conference. This is a very new program and I think we might have been the first VMUG to offer these certs on site. The bottom picture shows the helpful people that helped us staff an experts session that allowed the audience to ask questions about VMware topics.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

Page 5

The 5th page brings us a great session about VSAN one of the hottest new technologies shown in the top right picture. The afternoon brought some tasty Ice Cream snacks that were served up in the exhibit hall area. The lower right shows the signage for the VCA certification room.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

Page 6

The final page shows the helpful VMware team that was manning the VMware booth in the exhibit hall. The middle right picture is just a small sampling of the great conversations that took place between vendors and customers. The bottom picture shows the open tables in the exhibit hall that allowed attendees or vendors to sit, relax and talk about the cool stuff they were learning.

VMUG 2013 Comic recap

The day was great and seemed to be enjoyed by everyone that I spoke with. We will be picking the date for the 2014 conference soon and begin planning sometime next year. We hope to see everyone that attended this year plus many more people. So spread the work if you had fun or thought it was of value to you.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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With the Chicago VMUG User Conference coming up on October 22nd, I thought that a list of some of sessions that caught my eye. The day will hold over 35 breakout sessions and 2 larger keynotes for the day. The sessions are split between VMware sessions and vendor sessions. You can see the whole agenda here.

I have broken my list up between VMware and Vendor sessions, since they will not overlap you can attend the top ones from each category. I have ranked them in order of my interest, but you may see other sessions on the agenda that are of more interest to you.

VMware Sessions

Dave Stafford of VMware will be catching everyone up with the latest EUC news from VMworld Barcelond

Real world automation using Orchestrator – This is a customer + VMware presentation

vCloud Hybrid Service extend your data center

Troubleshooting storage performance by Raj Jethnani local VMware hero

Vendor Sessions

10 Things you should know about storage for vSphere by Eric Sebert from HP

Securing your data center by Trend Micro

HP Blade system networking by our own Eric Shanks

I hope you saw a few sessions that will make it worth your trip to Rosemont for the FREE all day VMUG conference. There will be plenty of VMware resources, customers and vendors that to discuss tech topics with. We will have some good eats and your also sure to land some good swag. Don’t forget we are also giving away $10,000 worth of giveaways from the VMUG including a $4000 home lab for one lucky winner.

You can register here for the free conference. Hope to see you there on the 22nd.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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On June 5, 2013 I was lucky enough to be able to present a session at the Chicago VMUG meeting. There was a very good turn out for the meeting. Around 180 users registered and around 100 people in the room for the presentations. I was asked to present a session on VMware Horizon Suite, the End User Computing (EUC) offering that is getting a ton of press from VMware and media. This is right up my alley as I work as an Architect for a Ahead VMware partner in Chicago and Horizon is on fire as of late. There have been a large number of requests for briefings and consulting services in this space since Horizon was announced.

During the session I focused on the separate parts that make up the Horizon Suite and what was new with each of the products. Since most people are pretty familiar with at least the base functions of View the sessions mostly covered what cool things View 5.2 brings to the table. The Mirage and Workspace parts of the presentation focused more on educating people in whole about the products since these are either new products or not widely understood by most customers. The session prompted some great questions from the audience which is always a good sign that people are listening and interested.

Later in the day myself, Chris Wahl, Eric Shanks and Nimble storage sat on a panel that took open questions from the audience. During this session there was a large amount of interest in the Horizon Suite which lead to more great questions from the attendees. Overall the VMUG meeting was a great day and I enjoy helping the the Chicago VMUG and when available its always fun to present a session.

You can view my presentation from the session by grabbing a PDF version from here.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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Well October 31st and Halloween have come and gone and I’m just getting around to writing my recap. It was a busy day all round between the overwhelming success of Chicago’s first VMUG user conference and sugar overload from candy. I can’t say how proud I am of the turn out that the VMUG had. We broke an attendance record for a first time user conference with 500 people showing up at the conference. I believe the previous record was 390, so we have something to be proud of Chicago VMUG members.

The conference had speaking tracks from VMware and Partners on some great topics. I was able to attend sessions on View 5 and related products and a deep dive on ThinApp. Both were really good sessions with great speakers from VMware. I know that the VMUG leaders would like to thank everyone that came out to the conference and the Vendors that sponsored for making it all possible. But a huge thanks goes to VMware and the VMUG organization for helping plan this big event and making sure things went off without any issues.

I was able to meet a bunch of new VMUG members from Chicago and look forward to staying in contact with you all and meeting more. I hope that people that attended the user conference are able to attend our quarterly VMUG meetings that we hold. Growing our membership and creating a community around VMware in Chicago is a big part of the VMUG.

The Picture below is a view from the View 5 session that was presented by Josh from VMware. He covered all the infrastructure parts of View 5 and what roles they play. There were several good questions from the audience and he covered some real world implementation stories.

The image below is a picture from the exhibit space at the VMUG conference. We had tremendous vendor interest in the meeting. There was 55 boots in the space and some really great vendors and partners were there talking with VMUG members and helping them with products and solutions.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design

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Well we have another successful Chicago VMUG meeting under our belts. With each meeting we have it really feels like were building a strong community in Chicago. The reason that I got involved with the VMUG community was to network with my fellow VMware people and to share our experiences. I think building a strong community benefits everyone that attends the VMUG meetings. Sure you get to listen to briefings from VMware and other virtualization related companies but being able to talk openly with others that are fighting the same battles as you everyday is priceless. You get to ask questions of people who have done what you are seeking to do or are also planning the same projects. These are opportunities that would not come around often if it were not for the VMUG meetings. You can see the slide decks from most of the presentations on the Chicago VMUG blog.

Face it most of us have our internal teams and maybe a few friends in the industry. But do you really get the opportunity to speak openly about these technologies with industry experts and 100 other community members very often. Well if you attend the VMUG meetings then you can answer yes. Today I met several new people and I can say that at each meeting I’m sure to meet other interesting members.

In the first session of the day we had Chris Fox in from VMware. Chris gave us a briefing of new products and announcements that have taken place since our last meeting which included both VMware San Francisco and VMworld Copenhagen. In this session Chris laid out what VMware’s current Cloud and VDI offerings are. Chris also was nice enough to hang around and participate on our VDI panel in the last session that I describe below.

The second session of the day was a general VDI related presentation from Elias Khnaser from Artemis Technologies. In this talk Elias covered the business and technology reasons that are causing most companies to consider Virtual Desktops. He also provided some sample numbers on sizing and costs related to VDI deployments. Elias also spoke about the many options available within the VDI space.

Next up was Wyse technology. During this session we got a recap of the thin client offerings that Wyse has today. I was really surprised to see the Wyse mobile thin clients, these are kind of a Netbook style thin client. They also covered software clients that Wyse offers for PC’s and the popular Pocket Cloud app for iPad and iPhone.

After the 2nd session we took a short lunch break and enjoyed some delicious Fajitas that the staff at Dave & Busters in Addison cooked up for us. The food was fresh and ready right when we needed it to be. I was pleased with the meeting room and the service we got from the staff.

The next session was from RES Software and Brian talked about how RES can help with your VDI planning and deployments. It was good to hear from RES as I was already familiar with some competing products in this space. We got to hear about their profile management and workspace extender products. Brian from RES Software was also kind enough to sit on your discussion panel later in the day also.

Before I wrap up the last portion of the VMUG meeting I’ll cover what is likely a favorite of many. The prizes that we gave out today to many that attended the VMUG meeting. During the experts discussion panel we handed out vNerd shirts from TrainSignal and vArmy T-shirts to people that asked questions to the panel. Then we drew names for several people that won VMware related training videos from TrainSignal and Elias Khanser. Also the great folks at Wyse gave away an Apple iPad and the team at RES Software gave away a Flip video camera and several Starbucks gift cards. I would like to talk our sponsors and other companies that supplied these great gifts that we were able to provide to our lucky winners. Oh I almost forgot that one of our great members donated 4 tickets to an upcoming Chicago Bulls game that were given away to a lucky member at the meeting.

We finished off the meeting today with a panel of VMware heavy hitters that bravely took all questions from the audience related to VDI. I was really impressed by this session it was our first real panel type discussion and picking Virtual Desktops as the topic seemed to be a great choice. The questions came fast and there was a bunch of them. The conversation was honest and open. We had questions that ranged from security, SAN storage planning to building a small VDI of 50 clients. Each question was great because they came from a community member with a real issue or someone just seeking some insight to help with their planning. I posted a couple of pictures of the panel below taken with different cell phone cameras so excuse the poor quality. The panel consisted of the following people, I will fill in the names that are missing once I go over my notes.

Brian is a VCDX5-DCV and a Sr. Tech Marketing Engineer at Nutanix and owner of this website. He is active in the VMware community and helps lead the Chicago VMUG group. Specializing in VDI and Cloud project designs. Awarded VMware vExpert status 6 years for 2016 - 2011. VCP3, VCP5, VCP5-Iaas, VCP-Cloud, VCAP-DTD, VCAP5-DCD, VCAP5-DCA, VCA-DT, VCP5-DT, Cisco UCS Design